


Juno Steel and the Portrait of Zarathustra

by voidteatime



Series: This Tornado Loves You (the Hieronverse) [3]
Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Compliant, Case Fic, Gen, Multi, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-22
Updated: 2020-01-22
Packaged: 2021-02-25 13:29:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22357030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voidteatime/pseuds/voidteatime
Summary: Raw from self-inflicted heartbreak and in desperate need of a win, Juno Steel picks up a case tracking down a painting stolen from Hyperion City's premier art gallery. The problem? The owner of the gallery happens to be his ex.
Relationships: Juno Steel/Original Character(s)
Series: This Tornado Loves You (the Hieronverse) [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1719880
Comments: 2
Kudos: 19





	Juno Steel and the Portrait of Zarathustra

**Author's Note:**

> This is technically rehash of an earlier fic I never finished, "Juno Steel and the Walking Portrait of Zarathustra". Essentially, as I was writing the first fic, Juno and Hieron's relationship revealed itself to be a LOT more complicated than I initially thought.
> 
> This fic takes place about two months after the events of Final Resting Place, and Juno's still feeling a bit raw. 
> 
> Comments and kudos are super appreciated.

_They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but as far as I could tell, those words were ‘I don’t know what I’m supposed to be; I am in agony, please help me’. I stare at the lurid colors, splattered and daubed across the canvas with no discernible thought or purpose. It looks as if somebody had dipped all six of their cat’s feet in paint and let it chase around a laser. The owner of this place probably dropped a couple hundred grand on this temper tantrum in acrylic and matte. Personally, I wouldn’t spend half a cred._ _My name’s Juno Steel, I’m a private eye, and I’m not sure why I answered a call from the Arcade Bizarre outside of office hours to begin with._ _  
  
_ A person in a sheer dress and an oversized scarf stepped up beside the contemplative Juno, arms folded behind their back as they perused the painting from behind a pair of pink-lensed glasses, with only the occasional side glance to the detective.  
“It’s marvelous, isn’t it?”  
  
“It’s no sad clown painting, but I guess it’s alright,” Juno grunted dismissively.  
  
Hieron chuckled at Juno’s brush-off. “The sad clown paintings are on the third floor, actually.”   
  


_ The person dressed in their finest neons goes by Hieron, painter by trade and new owner of the “Arcade Bizarre”, Hyperion City’s premier art gallery. Several years back Croesus Kanagawa crowned the then-unknown artist the regent of the Hyperion City art scene and suddenly everybody worth something on Mars and beyond owned a Hieron original. I saw a great deal of them pass through Valles Vicky while I was working off my debt. Croesus clearly saw something special in Hieron’s work, or perhaps just Hieron themself, as he bequeathed the Arcade Bizarre to the painter in his will; a move that had every newspaper and tabloid on Mars buzzing with speculation for weeks. I missed the brunt of it; the news had dropped while I was rotting in a Martian tomb hundreds of miles away.  _

_ I knew Hieron long before Croesus got the chance to, in the way that two twentysomethings with stupid and lofty aspirations liked to know each other- intensely and in the back of the van Hieron called home. Things had been going too well until Hieron let fame sink its gleaming fangs into their throat and they suddenly decided that we should  _ **_stop_ ** _ knowing each other and they should move to Pluto. I only realized they had returned to Mars when they invited me to the Arcade Bizarre’s opening gala a few years ago. I didn't go. I had told myself I wouldn't last ten minutes surrounded by art snobs before I started throwing punches. In truth, I just didn't want to watch Hieron hang off of Croesus' arm all evening, reminding me of what could have been.  
  
_

“Spare me the guided tour and just take me to the crime scene, Hieron.” 

Hieron’s charismatic smile faded and they nodded. "Of course. This way, please."

With a gesture of their hand, Hieron directed the both of them down the hall to an entrance flanked by two armed guards and marked off with a rope and a 'gallery temporarily under construction' sign. It led to a low-ceilinged tunnel with walls punctured by dozens of shallow holes. The closeness of it all reminded Juno uncomfortably of the Martian tomb he’d fought Miasma in. The place where his eye had been ached with the memory. He rubbed at his eyepatch as the tunnel opened up into a round, featureless room made of dark grey concrete that echoed and amplified their footsteps. In the center of the chamber hovered a gaudy gold frame the size of a refrigerator.  
  
“I know art is supposed to be subjective but this is hardly _objective_ , H.”  
  
“ _This_ , Detective, was the last great work of the late Plutonian artist Sevoglio Zarathustra, and the Arcade Bizarre’s most notable artwork. I sank an embarrassing amount of effort and time into obtaining it for my collection, plus it holds _great_ personal meaning to me. And now somebody’s made off with it!”

“And you didn’t think to report the theft to the HCPD?”  
  
Hieron smiled sheepishly, scratching their jaw with a hand brimming with silver jewelry.  
“Well, I didn’t come by this Zarathustra by entirely _legal_ means. And I would rather not have Min find out I have- er- ‘misplaced’ one of the gallery’s most valuable pieces after just a couple of weeks of becoming the official owner, given her position on the Board of Trustees.”  
  
“I didn’t know Min Kanagawa was such a patron of the arts.”  
  
“She is when that art makes her money. People pay top cred to get into the Arcade Bizarre _just_ for the bragging rights. I’m dreading the dip in ticket sales already." Hieron rubbed at the back of their neck, jaw set firmly. "But that is beside the point and a problem for future Hieron to deal with. Future Juno, however, has a different task ahead of him: I have a board meeting on Wednesday and I would like to have my painting back before then. I don’t want Min to have more reason to sharpen her knives. She’s not..uh...happy about the will thing.”

“Yeah, you should probably skip town for a while,” Juno suggested unhelpfully as he stepped up to the gilded frame to investigate it more closely. "You’re giving me barely four days to recover an irreplaceable work of art. Knowing how quickly art like this passes hands, it’s probably off-planet by now." 

"I have the utmost faith in your abilities, Juno. Why do you think I hired you and not some other, better-rated PI off the registry? It's not as if money's any object." 

"You sure know how to make a lady feel special, Hieron," Juno scoffed, ignoring the undeserved twinge of pleasure up his spine for being Hieron's first choice, their shared history be damned.  
  


"What kind of security are you running in this place anyway?" Juno asked Hieron from over his shoulder.

"Oh, the usual. Pressure sensitive flooring that triggers the alarms, monitoring done by a top-of-the-line surveillance AI, armed guards…" Hieron trailed off for a moment as they unwound their oversized scarf and casually tossed it back into the exit tunnel. 

It shred into confetti that fluttered to the floor. 

"...And an invisible grid of deadly lasers," they concluded. 

Juno staggered back from Hieron a bit, startled at how quickly the scrap of clothing had been mulched. "You didn't think to inform me about the shredder before corralling me through it?!"

"Oh hush, you're in one piece aren't you?"

"Yeah, why is that?"

Hieron reached out with their jewelry-heavy hand for Juno's wrist, lifting it so the detective could see the black band about it. He had been given one upon entry to the Arcade Bizarre, but he figured it had just been a formality, not a failsafe. "The entrance to this gallery is one big sensor that detects an ID chip in this band that temporarily deactivates the 'shredder'. Every guest gets one."

"But you're not wearing a band, and you're not quadruple cerberus chow." 

Hieron pushed some of their hair back, revealing a scar behind their left ear. "I had my chip inserted so I can visit my artwork as I please. My staff is also chipped so they can do their jobs without incident."

"Seems a bit invasive."

"The average Zarathustra sells for enough on the black market to buy and terraform your own planetoid the size of Olympus Mons. His swan song self-portrait? Easily thrice that. I think a little outpatient surgery is a fair trade to protect something so precious."

"The thief didn't get the memo then, take a look."

Juno pointed Hieron towards the center of the room. Scraps of canvas flapped from the edges of the frame, cleanly cut and slightly singed as if the painting had been hacked away with a plasma cutter. "Whoever nicked it obviously didn’t care for the market value or they needed to make a quick getaway." 

He moved to the smooth concrete walls of the room next, leaving Hieron perturbed as they stared at the remnants of their prized painting. Juno ran his palms over the walls, feeling for any seams that indicated a forced and covered entry, but came up empty. The only entrance into this room was also the only exit, through that claustrophobic tunnel. Hieron returned to him, biting a knuckle nervously. 

"Well, don't let me hinder your investigation, detective. I-I'll be in my office should you have any more questions."

"Don't worry, there will be."

They turned on their heel and left back through the shredder, the echoes of their footsteps and their muttering in NeoItaliano growing fainter until Juno was left alone in the room. Truthfully, even though he had been assured that he would have safe passage, he was loathe to step back into that tunnel of death. And now, without the sound of footsteps echoing about, he could hear the faint hum of active lasers and felt trapped. He pulled out his comms to try and call Rita for more information, but the room that housed the final work of a dead painter was just as much of a dead zone for outgoing calls. He sighed and walked towards the frame again, reading the title placard that floated just below it:  
  
Sevoglio Zarathustra  
Tartarus, Pluto  
**_Gran Finale_ ** ( **_Self-Portrait)_ ** _  
_ _Oil on canvas, unknown material, hematochrome_  
Collection of Hieron, gifted by the Zarathustra estate  
  


_Yeah._ **_Gifted._ ** _I'm sure that's what happened._

In the quiet, his thoughts began to run away with him.

 _A stolen priceless artwork protected by a literal death grid in the most prestigious art gallery in Hyperion City... My mind doesn't just leap to conclusions, it pole vaults and it's over that ravine before I can even catch it by the sleeve. This had_ **_him_ ** _written all over it._

He didn't notice that his thoughts had driven him towards the exit, his apprehension about the lasers forgotten in lieu of this fresher one. He kicked through the shredded scarf as if it were simul-snow on Christmas as he made his way through the tunnel and into the open air of the rest of the Arcade Bizarre.

 _Snap out of it, Steel. Focus on the case. There are other thieves out there- ones that simply pilfer paintings instead of stone hearts, I should get more information out of Hieron first before I consider the possibility that_ **_he_ ** _might still be…_

He glanced behind him and went pale upon realizing that if it weren't for the band about his wrist, he would have worried himself into mincemeat courtesy of Hieron's insane death trap of a security measure.

_And maybe a drink while I'm at it. I’ve earned it._

* * *

  
  
_Hieron’s office is a lot like Hieron themself; a little garish, a lot bright, and somehow still maintaining its dignity. Mid-20th-century Earth architecture showcased kitschy neon signs and Hieron’s fish tank teeming with species of fish with too few eyes to have been caught locally. A tarp had been laid out behind their desk, tubes of paint scattered across it along with an easel holding up an unfinished study of the building across the street. Judging from the crustiness of the opened tube of yellow on the lip of the easel, it had been a long time since Hieron had touched that canvas._

Hieron’s leaning over their desk doing an obvious line of something when the detective entered. They snorted in surprise, causing a cloud of rainbow dust to rise and sprinkle back down in a fine coat on the chair Juno settled into.   
  
“J-juno! Haven’t you heard of knocking?!” Hieron admonished, wiping more dust from off their upper lip.  
  
“I did knock but you must not have heard me through that haze of Technicolor you got going there. You know that junk leeches the pigment from your eyes?"  
  
“It helps me with my head stuff,” Hieron insisted vaguely as they rose to their feet a little unsteadily before walking to the minibar that sat between two couches in the lounge area of the office. “A drink, Detective?”  
  
“It’s 9 in the morning, Hieron.”  
  
“So no?”  
  
“I didn’t say that.”  
  
Hieron poured a peaty Ganymedian scotch from a crystal decanter into a glass and set it in front of Juno on the desk. They took their seat again on the opposite side, brushing the remaining Technicolor on top to the floor. The detective side-eyed Hieron over a sip of the offered booze, wondering just how many hundred creds were burning the back of his throat right now.  
  
“I take it you have more questions for me, then.” Hieron leaned back in their office chair and threaded their fingers.  
  
“You said there was security footage of the painting, can I see it?”  
  


"Of course," Hieron began, turning to look up into the subtle security camera on the corner of the room, "Orthus, can you send me video from Section Q-61 from 0200 to 0415? Thank you, dear."   
  
“ _ Yes, User Hieron _ ,” Orthus responded in a soft, sultry voice not too unlike Hieron’s.   
  
“The hell’s an Orthus?”   
  
“The Arcade Bizarre’s surveillance AI, monitors the entire gallery and logs anything out of the ordinary. Saved Croesus a fortune on hiring personnel...kinda temperamental though.”

" **_WARNING: REQUESTED FOOTAGE HAS BEEN MODIFIED BY AN EXTERNAL SOURCE."_ **

Juno nearly spilled his drink from the jump in volume and tone of the AI's secondary voice. "Geezus!"

" _ I apologize, User Hieron. It is embarrassing to deliver video of such poor quality _ ," Orthus continued, back to its softer, more user-friendly tone.

Hieron made a dismissive gesture at the camera as the footage was brought up through a hologram at the center of their desk. "Don't worry about it Orthus, you did your best. That's all for now."

Juno hid a slightly amused expression behind his glass. "You always talk to your AI like that?"

"Sometimes Orthus is the only thing I  _ can  _ talk to, Detective," admitted Hieron as they pressed play on the hologram. 

Zarathustra's painting hovered undisturbed in its golden frame, in the center of its chamber. The artwork inside looked like a mask of death, several expressions that ran the gamut from hysteric euphoria to melancolic torpor pulled across a face that dripped down the canvas against a backdrop of blues and purples meant to invoke the cosmos. The grotesque self-portrait of a tortured genius.

 _Looking at_ **_Gran Finale_ ** _, I could understand why Hieron had gone to such supposed great and illegal lengths to add it to their collection. Hieron had always been attracted to these kind of things; beautiful in their ugliness and implied monstrosity. It certainly explained why they had gravitated towards me all those years ago._

Suddenly, the picture flickered and the painting was gone. Juno rewound and watched the footage again, looking for any shadows, any indication that somebody had disabled the cameras, the telltale jostle of manual manipulation, but came up empty. There’s a painting, a slight hiccup in the feed, and then there’s not. Just as Orthus had said, the footage had been tampered with.. Juno took another contemplative swig from his glass.  
  
“And your guards didn’t see anything suspicious? What about Orthus?"

Hieron shook their head, letting the hologram continue to play between them and Juno, casting a pale blueish light across both of their faces. “All security personnel posted last night didn’t report anything out of the usual until Orthus logged an anomaly in the room that holds the painting at 4:28 AM. By the time one of my guards arrived five minutes later to investigate, the painting had disappeared from its frame. Although…”

Another drink.  
  
“...one of my new hires didn’t show up for his shift this morning. Name's Kessler." Hieron looked contemplative, finally dismissing the hologram to look at Juno directly, watching the slow realization dawn across the detective’s face as the piece too conveniently clicked into place.  
  
“Tampered footage, no alarms tripped, no signs of forced entry: this _reeks_ of an inside job. And Kessler's playing hooky the same morning that his new workplace gets robbed? It's almost as if he WANTS to be a suspect."

_It was a promising lead, unfortunately, in my line of work, the most obvious suspect almost never commits the crime. Whoever had nicked Hieron's painting thought they were being clever setting up this misdirection. Still, it couldn't hurt to track down Kessler for a few questions._

"Think harder, Hieron, is there anybody else who might want to steal from you? Anybody that would want to ruin you?”  
  
Hieron laughed, flashing wolf-sharp teeth. “I’m Hyperion City elite, darling. Lots of people want to ruin me."  
  
“That’s incredibly helpful, H. _Really_ narrows my list of suspects down.”  
  
“Maybe Cecil’s playing games with me? We are _practically_ blood brothers. No, really, he made me cut my palm and swear fealty as soon as I returned from Pluto.” H held up a right hand to display a scar across their palm. “I’m all he’s got since Croesus passed on and Cass is offworld somewhere and doesn’t write. He wouldn’t put me in a bad position with Min like this though…”  
  
Juno felt something prickle at the back of his neck that he told himself wasn’t jealousy. “Unless the twerp’s desperate for a promo for next season.”  
  
“ _From the Jaws of Death_ is doing gangbusters in the ratings but... I suppose you could be right.” 

_Hieron sits back from their desk in contemplation and removes their pink tinted glasses to rub their eyes with a sigh. When they look up at me again, I'm seized with the need to look anywhere else. It wasn't just the glasses that had made their irises appear different. What I remembered being such a deep midnight blue, had become a bright, violent red that was impossible to avoid. They stare me over like I’m a slab of granite with some unseen work of sculpture inside. Like they could tap the chisel in just the right places and bring out something profound and maybe even beautiful. Something draws its fingers across the back of my skull; no,_ ** _inside_** _my skull. If it weren't for the Egg of Purus wiping all of the ancient Martian DNA from my eyesocket and grey matter, I could have sworn Miasma's nasty little sprout had put down roots again._ _  
__  
_ Hieron spoke at length, their eyes a touch unfocused and their voice serious.  
  
“There _might_ be another culprit…”  
  
_And even though I know it would bring me nowhere, I think of Nureyev….He looked at me like I was a fully formed masterpiece and not the work in progress Hieron saw. Of course both of them were wrong; I’m not a work of art or potential art-- I’m a pile of rubble that only resembles a man if you squint at it._ _  
_  
“And who’s that?”  
  
“The painting simply...walked itself out.”  
  
Juno’s constant slight scowl deepened as he used a foot to push his chair back away from the desk. "Hieron, I am going to walk _myself_ out of this eyesore of an office if you’re even remotely suggesting that your creepy painting's got a ghost in it."  
  
HIeron continued, unfazed. “Zarathustra believed in infusing his work with parts of himself, and I don’t mean just metaphorically. He used iron pulled from his own blood in the paint and signed every work with a pricked thumb."  
  
“Gross.”  
  
“I’m just saying, a man that obsessed with blending into his work DEFINITELY intended to haunt a final painting of his- It's astounding the old bastard didn't title it 'Phylactery'," Hieron muttered, mostly to themself as Juno stood up from his chair and made his way to the office door, clearly done with this conversation.

Hieron jumped to their feet, reaching after Juno as they laid out their evidence in an attempt to reason with him. "It adds up, Juno! The canvas didn’t have enough weight to trigger any pressure plates, and I chip all my artwork too, so the laser grid isn’t a problem. Zarathustra's ghost probably just...decided it was tired of its vessel being on display and took a leave of absence."

Then, sheepish, they brought their reaching hand back to scratch their neck. "But I’ll...I’ll check the archives downstairs...you know. Just in case it's made its way down there. Maybe I missed a memo about it being removed for cleaning or…"

Juno's hand paused on the door knob and he grit his teeth. Hieron sounded so sure he couldn't tell if they were fucking with him or they honestly believed the painting was possessed by some tired and vengeful ghost.

"You've been on Pluto too long, H. Ghosts aren't real, and if they are, they've got better things to do than sit around in paintings all day. So I'm gonna focus on our two _living_ suspects, and maybe write a 'no ghosts' clause into my contract because that's something I apparently need to include now, and you can have your seances or whatever it is you do."

"Seances are minstrelsy for-"

Juno cut them off. "I _really_ don't care. Anything else I should know for my investigation?"

"Does Rita still work for you?"

Juno prickled. "Yes."

"I'll grant her access to the files she'll need to track down Kessler. I’d rather she not hack her way into the Arcade Bizarre's servers again.”

"Wait a goddamn minute, you have Rita's comms coordinates?!"

"I _am_ technically a Kanagawa. I have remote access to any comms used to view our content. And Rita's a Top Fan of my livepainting streams in particular." Hieron chewed on their lower lip, before nodding, as if deciding that was enough to divulge. “Don’t yell at her for it, okay?”

"I won’t ye- fine, do it." Juno pushed the door of the office open. "Keep your comms close, in case I have more questions later."

"It's nice to see you again, Juno." Hieron offered. 

_I make the mistake of glancing back at them then and catching their wolf-toothed smile that causes the spot between my shoulder and neck to ache with a demanding memory. I push it away and shut the office door behind me._

Juno's comms beeped as soon as he made it back to the main atrium. "Rita."

"Boss! I just woke up and got an email from the Arcade Bizarre so I clicked it, thinkin' maybe I had finally gotten that invitation to Bizarre Nights after years of breakin into the servers to better my odds in the ticket lottery. But when I opened the message it was just a string of encoded gobbledygook and a note that said 'Ask Juno for the details' so I'm askin. Are you at the Arcade Bizarre?!"

Juno stared up at a mobile of idly rotating, high-gloss-finish shapes that he occasionally caught his distorted reflection in like a dangling funhouse mirror and grimaced. "You mean 'Hieron's House of Questionable Taste'? Yes. One of their big painting's gone missing and they're giving me only four days to get it back."

"Oh! So you're finally talkin' to Mx. Hieron again. That's great news! I always thought you two made the cutest coupl-"

"They hired me for a job, Rita. Nothing more than that." Juno growled. "The sooner I can retrieve Hieron's painting the sooner I can pocket their creds and put this all behind me-"

"But, Mista Steel, if you didn't wanna see Mx. Hieron again, why didja take their case?"

_ I’d been asking myself the same question all morning. I’m not completely sure of the answer yet but I’m pretty sure it rhymes with ‘vesperation’. _

"....-The message Hieron sent you should grant you proper access into the Arcade Bizarre's personnel files. In the meantime, I guess I’m swinging by the Kanagawa mansion to pay Cecil a visit. Hieron thinks he might know something about the theft.”  
  
“Cecil’s not there, Mista Steel.” 

“What. How would you know?”  
  
“Because it’s 9 30AM and _Get Hyped Hyperion_ is on until noon. I’m watchin’ it right now! Cecil and Chef Flare Lamborghini are makin’ some kinda cricket stir fry? There’s a lot of fire, like WOW a LOT of fire.”

Juno pinched the bridge of his nose. “Just give me a call back when you find anything on a security guard named Kessler.”  
  
“You got it, Boss!”

 _Normally, I’d wait until the end of filming to corner and interrogate Cecil, but every minute wasted was another minute Hieron’s painting crept closer to becoming a lost work. And despite us parting on less-than-stellar circumstances...I owe it to them to NOT fuck this one up. __Hopefully I can catch Cecil between commercial breaks, or else Rita’s gonna be watching one HELL of an episode of **Get Hyped Hyperion** … _ _  
_


End file.
